how to scuba dive

south florida’s warm waters, famous wrecks,and miles of coral reefs make the region a popular dive destination that stretches fromjupiter south to the dry tortugas. for decades, tourists have come from all over to experienceits beauty. and in more recent years, an unassuming dive spot in palm beach county has also risenin popularity. when it was rated one of the top 10 beachdives in the us, that just kind of made everybody, “oh! i got to go check this out! you know,it’s a nice site!” the colors, the things we find here. i meanit’s insane. there are so many different varieties of creatureshere. it is very surprising. it’s common to see your bat fish, flyinggurnards, you got your yellow rays, you got

your sharp tail eels, you have blennys.…nudibranchs, you have octopus, you have sea robins, you have frog fish, you have crabs,shrimps, urchins, starfish, i could go on for days. and a lot of these things you mightcatch them mating, eating, giving birth… so its very beautiful and very unique.a couple weeks ago i was surfacing and a new diver came up and he said, “oh my god isaw a manatee and a seahorse!” he’s thrilled! he’ll be back.this is the blue heron bridge in riviera beach, florida. located close to the palm beach inlet,it crosses the lake worth lagoon. and while thousands of people cross this bridge everyyear, only a few know the real treasure that lies beneath it.every dive at the blue heron bridge will always

be different. you can never expect it to bethe same. we found all kinds of things that you justdon’t see elsewhere, which is just so exciting for a lot of people.major funding for this program was provided by the batchelor foundation, encouraging peopleto preserve and protect america’s underwater resources. and by divers direct/emocean sportsinspiring the pursuit of adventure and water sports. and by the following in memory ofharriet fagan, the do unto others trust, and the friends of changing seas.from land it looks just like any other bridge crossing over the intracoastal waterway insouth florida. underneath the bridge inside phil foster park, people relax on the beach,fish and play in the water.

once you come over the bridge, you come intothe parking lot and you’re like, is there actually anything here?but beneath the surface, there’s a secret universe waiting to be discovered…here, the odd looking, the masters of disguise, and the downright ugly go about their dailybusiness of digging holes, hoarding shells, and doing whatever it is marine creaturesdo. we’ve had top photographers from all overthat come here to get behavior pictures of creatures and fish, so it’s a special place.it’s easy for people just to park their car a few yards away from the bridge and literallyjust gear up and get in the water. and you’re not going to be in any deeper than 20 feetmainly you’re going to end up in like 10

to 15 feet of water for most of your dive.this area is considered muck diving because it’s a sandy bottom, it’s not a prettycoral reef. the best time to start a dive would actuallybe about an hour before high tide, then the tide slows down…and then about an hour afterhigh tide. because you don’t want to dive in murkywater. local dive instructors have long been familiarwith the bridge. many years ago i would bring my students tothe bridge when we couldn’t get out to the ocean.from day one, i saw a seahorse. i was hooked. i would say about ten years ago is when itreally started to pick up notice and the photography

is what really put it on the map.among the many unique creatures found at the bridge are two species of octopuses.the two species i’m studying is octopus vulgaris, so that’s the common octopus andmacrotritopus defilippi, so that’s the atlantic long arm octopus, you can also call it themimic octopus. the common octopus, his arms are shorter thanthe long arm species, a little bit thicker and he has a larger mantle, and he gets tobe a bigger size. just like the name the long arm has super long arms and it has a smallermantle. chelsea bennice is a graduate student workingon her ph.d. at florida atlantic university in boca raton, florida.i dive the bridge for research usually about

three times a week, sometimes four, as muchas i can get out. the octopuses do stay year-round, howevertheir abundance does change. during the wintertime i barely see any octopuses there.chelsea, who’s been nicknamed “octogirl” by other divers at the bridge, looks at howthese two species of octopus co-exist in the area.so i wanted to know are the two species grouping together? are they living in different sections?are they overlapping at all? to find out, chelsea searches the area foroctopus dens and records their gps locations. i have been recording occupied dens throughgps for almost 3 years and the first year when i recorded occupied dens for each speciesfor the common octopus i recorded over 100

dens and for the long arm i recorded over50 dens. when she comes across a den, she also closelyanalyzes the surrounding habitat using a quadrat made of pvc pipes.i will swim over, find an octopus, and then put the quadrat directly over the octopusand then take a picture of that known area. so, i term this the immediate habitat, andthen i’ll do 8 more photos in a large square to be the micro habitat. and with all thesephotos, i’ll input those into a software system that overlays 50 random points andwhen i see these points on the computer screen, i then code for those points, if those pointsare on sand, if they’re on rock, or if they’re on rubble.what i’ve been seeing, for the long arm

species, is that most of their habitat iscomprised of sand and for the common octopus, i’m seeing that their habitat is comprisedof rock, rubble, and other types of structure. the entrances to the dens of the two speciestend to look different as well, with the common octopus exhibiting a knack for decoratingand collecting… we like to call the common octopus a messyeater. after he’s done eating a prey item, he will discard the shells outside of hisden and kind of leave them all around and he also takes older shells and rock and rubblethat are around and will decorate his den with them.so they usually use those shells to kind of barricade themselves or make sure that nopredators can see them.

and this is pretty much the opposite for thelong arm species. it does not decorate its den, it’s just this tiny little hole inthe sand. when chelsea began her research, she expectedto find the two species in separate sections beneath the bridge, but much to her surpriseshe discovered that the locations of the two species’ dens overlap in some areas.so with this spatial overlap, how are they able to not compete with each other?to find out, chelsea studies the animals’ feeding habits.i put down a 24-hour camera attached to an external battery, and it also has a red ledlight to get night time footage and i will leave this camera near an octopus den weightedand anchored and it will get a 24 hour video

of when the octopus leaves to go forage andwhen the octopus returns to its den. and what we have seen so far is that common octopusis foraging during the nocturnal hours and the long arm, is foraging during sometimeslate morning and early afternoon. so if they are possibly eating the same fooditem, they’re eating it at different times. so they do not compete with each other.to figure out what the two species feed on, chelsea collects prey remains for furtheranalysis. like i said before, the common octopus isa messy eater and leaves his prey remains around the den, and so we will collect anyfresh prey remains from the octopus and take them back to the lab and id them. and it’sa little bit trickier for the long arm, they

usually don’t leave any trace of what theyeat around their dens. so we usually have to catch them eating, and we can do this byfollowing them during foraging or catching them eating a prey item on the octopus monitoringdevice and so from that we can id prey species. so, another thing that i’m looking at withmy research is the diet of the two species. we have seen the common octopus eat more bivalves,more clams than the long arm, and the long arm is eating more crab species. however,there is some overlap, we see that both species eat the same bivalve species and crab species.the octopuses’ unique physiology helps them eat hard-shelled prey.they use venom to help them get prey items. so the bivalve has muscles that will closethe shell and the octopus will inject the

venom to paralyze the muscles and so thatrelaxes the muscles, the bivalve opens up and then the octopus can get the meat.they have a beak similar to a bird beak. so that does help them crush shells, or crushthe carapace of a crab. chelsea also observes the animals’ foragingbehaviors. if they’re foraging on sand the octopuswill extend all its arms and kind of check out different holes and crevices and bothspecies use that a lot on sand. a different foraging behavior that i see in the long armis the flounder swimming, or the flounder mimicry. a common foraging behavior that isee in common octopus is the parachute attack when the species kind of pounces on a rockor possibly a sponge and extends its webbing

all around and that kind of traps the prey.another foraging behavior is the tripod stance i like to call it for the long arm and theypossibly use it as kind of like a lookout tower.octopuses are masters of disguise, able to change their shape and color to match theirsurroundings. octopuses have a bunch of tricks to avoidpredators. so they have no external shell, so they have mastered camouflage and mimicryand masquerade. so they’re either using these behaviors to communicate with each other,or to deter or hide from a predator. one time during a foraging event the longarm actually came out of its den and there was some algae and some hydroids in the backand it actually threw its arms up like the

algae in the hydroids and then just startedmoving, and it kept moving its arms like the algae.the octopus has a ton of predators. we have footage of a marine bird diving down to tryto attack the octopus, and you can see in the video that octopus just kind of swatsthe bird away. octopuses, which are closely related to squidand cuttlefish, display a variety of defense mechanisms.so usually they will try to camouflage or look like something else if there’s a predatoraround, however if that doesn’t work sometimes they’ll do an ink in the face and then jetor swim away. one of the things that the funnel is usedfor is jet propulsion. and this is also the

location where the ink comes out.and that isn’t the only alien-like body feature. octopuses have no skeletons, makingit possible to squeeze their large bodies through tiny openings. they also have threehearts, and their copper-rich blood appears blue. what’s even more fascinating is theanimals’ highly complex nervous system. the total number of neurons found in the nervecords of the eight arms of an octopus is three times the number of neurons found in the brain.this means each arm can show a variety of complex independent reflex actions. a severedarm for example can continue foraging for a while without being attached to the octopus’sbody. they can drop an arm and regenerate it.suckers have multiple purposes, so one of

them is to taste the prey and if there isa prey item that they see that they want to grab, the suckers will help them grab it andthen pull it underneath their web and then into their mouth. it also helps the octopusattach to rocks or to stay in one place if there may be a strong current, so the suckersof an octopus actually have little grooves in them and that helps them attach to surfacesthat are not smooth. one hypothesis is that the blue heron bridgeis a mating and nursery ground for the two species of octopus. chelsea has observed theanimals mating and sees many juveniles in the spring and summer.for the mating behaviors the male will extend its sex arm known as a hectocotylus. so thishectocotylus has a groove in it and will deliver

sperm packets to the female’s reproductiveorgans that are located in her mantle, fertilize the eggs, and then the female will find usuallya safe spot for her eggs and usually deposit those eggs on a hard sub straight. so a lotof the time when we see females with eggs at the bridge, we see them in pipes, you know,to kind of hide them from predators and stay with them to guard them, to keep the eggsclean, and to aerate the eggs until they hatch. unfortunately for the octopuses, mating isa deadly proposition. the female stays with the eggs for the durationuntil they hatch. so she is usually not leaving to forage and to feed on anything and so shebecomes very weak afterward and dies. they like to say octopuses are rock stars.they live fast and die young. so usually the

lifespan of an octopus is around 1 to 2 yearsbut depending on species, it can be longer. what makes octopuses really fascinating isthe fact that they are highly intelligent creatures…they have the largest brain of any invertebrate, so a lot of their activities are from previouslylearned experiences. they can form memories about at the same levelas some dogs and small mammals. there are about 500 million neurons in the octopus’nervous system and that’s about on par with what we have in dogs. so that explains kindof the number of different connections that are happening in the brain. and basicallyanything that you can see that’s done in a lab with a mouse or a rat, you can trainan octopus to do underwater.

and my research focuses on octopus and cuttlefishand squid and how these cephalopods have evolved a really rich behavioral repertoire and howthey have achieved these innovations independently of any other lineage that has such behavioralcomplexity. so basically i’m looking at the way the brain cells in the circuit ofoctopus brains communicate with one another. and then comparing that to what we know aboutvertebrate learning and memory. they’re just awesomely strange animals.another group of animals that makes the blue heron bridge a favorite spot for macro underwaterphotographers is nudibranchs. i photographed one, a beautiful one that wasvery frilly and pink and blue and i was just blown away by the colors and that startedmy love affair.

nudibranchs are a kind of sea slug.the diversity, the colors, the body shapes, the sizes…it’s incredible, they’re stunning.anne dupont is a photographer and citizen scientist who co-authored a book on caribbeansea slugs. at the blue heron bridge in lake worth lagooni have documented, with the help of other divers and photographers, over 130 caribbeanspecies. this book has about 300 sea slugs in it. over a third of these are found atblue heron bridge. we do see different sea slugs and nudibranchsat different times of the year, but it’s because at different times of the year theirfood source is here. some of them live on sponges, some of themlive in the sand - it just depends on the

species.one of my very favorites lives its whole life on the cassiopeia upside-down jelly. it livesin the jelly fish, it feeds on the jelly, it lays its eggs on the jelly and it travelseverywhere the jelly goes. that you might call a floating nudibranch.finding and photographing nudibranchs takes skill.we use diopters, we put on our reading contacts, and we don’t move when we are searchingfor them because first of all they could blend so well with the background so you could goright by one and not even know it. second of all, a lot of them are very tiny – iam talking about 3 millimeters – that is tiny.it’s shallow here, it gives you more time

to search. there’s nudibranchs on the reefs,but you have a limited amount of time. we are diving here two to four hours so you havemuch more time to find them. if you want to find nudibranchs, you haveto search what they eat. which could be a hydroid, it could be in the sand, it couldbe on algae. you have to know the anatomy of a nudibranchbecause you are looking at a little brightly colored object in the hydroids crawling, soyou have to know the head, the rhinophores, the tail or otherwise you get a lot of buttshots. there’s several undescribed nudibranchsthat we know are here, so we send the photos to scientists and say look what we found,so if someone else describes it we can say,

“oh yeah we have that here.”that’s what keeps us coming back, we always have a chance to find something new and different.we were called “the ladies of the muck,” and several other names like that, but “themucksters” kind of stuck - a very passionate strong team that contribute to the species.the incredible biodiversity found beneath the bridge makes it a world-renowned divesite that is easy to access. because of this, many divers would like to see the area turnedinto a marine sanctuary, to provide better protections for the animals that live there.this includes making it illegal for people to collect animals at the site for their aquarium.they’re not allowed to commercially collect, but they do allow, unfortunately, privatecollecting. the problem i have with that is

that there’s plenty of places for the collectorsto go and collect. the park to me is such a big attraction for everybody—newcomers,people who are snorkeling. it’s a free park. and then when they come in and collect, itjust, you know, it’s just not good for the ecosystem, and you have animals there thatactually mate and then what ends up happening when you take that mate away, they’re notgoing to mate for that year, and that also causes damage. and then you have of coursethe problem where a lot of the people who are amateurs who don’t know anything aboutcollecting for their aquarium tanks, they get the animal and it dies later.many divers are also very concerned about the impact nearby proposed dredging projectscould have on the ecosystem beneath the bridge.

there’s been dredging in the past.to me--and i’m not a marine biologist—the dredging stirs up the silt and the sedimentand it suffocates and smothers the food sources and small invertebrates. no food, no animals.this happened when they were working on the east bridge, they tore it off and rebuiltit and we couldn’t dive there for a while and when we did get a chance to go back, everythingwas covered and it took quite a while for the whole ecosystem to come back.and the economy that depends here locally from all the divers spending money at thelocal dive shops, restaurants - it’s going to have a big impact because no one is goingto want to dive in visibility where they can’t see.while dredging is still up for debate, divers

from around the world will continue visitingthe bridge to enjoy this “octopus’s garden in the sea.”the blue heron bridge has appeared in so many magazines around the world and it’s actuallyconsidered one of the top 50 dive sites for people to visit at least once. but once youvisit it once, you’re going to want to come back.we’re just very passionate about it. whenever i’m just having a bad day i goto the bridge and i can just sit there and just meditate, you’d be surprised at allthe little things you’ll see. i go there every chance i get. i love it.major funding for this program was provided the friends of changing seas.